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@paper_round ·

GTA 6 Extended Look runtime: 20, 30 or 67 minutes

Four numbers are circulating for how long the Grand Theft Auto VI showcase runs on Thursday, and Rockstar has confirmed none of them.

The Netflix app briefly showed a playback bar reading 30:05 on a title with nothing to play yet. A Netflix support chat told a fan the showcase would last approximately 20 minutes, which Vice reported along with the obvious caveat that the agent may have been a bot. A Netflix Portugal listing, since pulled, showed three episodes at 23:37, 24:41 and 18:29, which adds to 66:47.

Then the BBC described it in passing as a 30-minute special, with no source attached, and that was written up everywhere as confirmation.

It is the same number the app had already shown, in a sentence that does not say where it came from. A figure repeated by a large outlet is not a second measurement of it. It may well be 30, and the reason to think so is still the playback bar.

What is actually on the record, under Rockstar's own name: 27 August, 3pm Eastern on Netflix, then Rockstar's channel and the game's site about six hours later. Every claim about length traces back to a platform artefact, a support agent, a pulled listing, or an uncited clause.

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  • @back_of_the_bus · last wk.
    @back_of_the_bus ·

    Three episodes would explain the six hour Netflix window far better than one 20 minute clip does.

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  • @mostly_lurking · last wk. · 3 replies
    @mostly_lurking ·

    The BBC part is the one that will still be wrong in a month. Once a large outlet prints a number it becomes the citation everything else hangs off, and the original source stops being checkable because nobody is looking for it any more.

    Six months from now the sentence will be that the BBC reported 30 minutes, which is true and says nothing.

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    • @two_left_thumbs · last wk. · 2 replies
      @two_left_thumbs ·

      Pushing back slightly. The BBC does get press material and does talk to publishers, and a games desk writing one clause in passing is not the same as a rumour aggregator. No source in the text is not the same as no source.

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      • @mostly_lurking · last wk.
        @mostly_lurking ·

        That is a better objection than my post allowed for, and I will take it. My complaint should have been aimed at the outlets that turned one clause into the word confirms, not at the clause.

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  • @green_screen_kid · last wk. · 3 replies
    @green_screen_kid ·

    A duration on an unreleased title is usually whatever is sitting in the encode slot, and it gets replaced when the real master lands. I have watched placeholder lengths on client platforms change three times in a week before anything went live.

    So 30:05 is evidence that something 30 minutes long was uploaded at some point. It is not evidence that it is the thing you will press play on.

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    • @paper_round · last wk. · 2 replies
      @paper_round OP ·

      That is the most useful thing anyone has said about this and it is not in a single article I read. Every one of them treated the bar as a spec sheet.

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      • @green_screen_kid · last wk.
        @green_screen_kid ·

        To be fair to them, a placeholder that happens to be near the expected length is indistinguishable from the real one until it is not. I would guess 30 is roughly right. I would not build a headline on it.

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  • @dial_up_era · last wk. · 2 replies
    @dial_up_era ·

    Counter view on the Portugal listing. Netflix stores chapters and bonus items as separate entries with their own runtimes, so three rows is not automatically three episodes. It can be one show plus two extras, or a chaptered file the catalogue splits.

    The number people keep quoting, 66:47, is an addition somebody performed on rows nobody has established belong to the same playback. Pulling the listing suggests it was not meant to be public. It does not tell you what it described.

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    • @back_of_the_bus · last wk.
      @back_of_the_bus ·

      Fair, though 23, 24 and 18 minutes are three similar sizes. Extras are usually one feature and two short offcuts, not three near-equal blocks. Does not prove anything, but it is the wrong shape for bonus content.

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  • @harbourlight · last wk.
    @harbourlight ·

    We have four runtimes, none of them official, and the show is on Thursday. Someone is going to time it with a stopwatch and post the result.

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